Experimental Philosopher to Clone Obama, Lady Gaga, and Other Celebrities

What if you could replicate President Obama's famous cool, Lady Gaga's style and Michael Phelps's athleticism? An experimental philosopher is attempting to do just that. Sort of.

Jonathan Keats, a "poet of ideas" whose exploits include opening a photosynthetic restaurant for plants and a celestial observatory for cyanobacteria, is now introducing "the first trouble-free human cloning technique."

Keats and other researchers will employ epigenetics to "make replication of famous people as routine as downloading movies." Celebrities such as President Obama, Lady Gaga, Michael Phelps, Oprah Winfrey and Jennifer Lopez will all be cloned, but none of them will be present at The Epigenetic Cloning Laboratory between September 13th and October 27th at the AC Institute, a nonprofit arts organization located at 547 W. 27th St., 2nd Floor, in New York City. (For more information, visit www.artcurrents.org).

Keats explains:

"We're doing it entirely with personal data harvested from the Web. That and some chemicals bought over-the-counter at Walgreens."

Obama and Gaga yeast

Here's how it works:

"We're epigenetically cloning Obama and Gaga in Saccharomyces cerevisiae," says Mr. Keats. "It's an organism more commonly known as brewer's yeast." Saccharomyces cerevisiae has a rapid lifecycle, and that means that over the course of six weeks the populations of yeast cells will take on the epigenetic traits of the five target celebrities.

If you are thinking right now that the yeast cells in the picture above hardly resemble Obama or Gaga, then you are missing the point. According to Keats, "epigenetics tells us that the yeast should become the same as them at a functional level."

Keats's experiments won't end there. A San Francisco subsidiary is reportedly selling kits to clone George Washington and Jesus Christ.

In the video below, Keats explains his approach to "experimental philosophy":